Chibok Girls: Human Rights Lawyer Exposes FG Intrigue

PRESS STATEMENT

Ladies and gentlemen of the press, please find the second installment of our expose’ on the government’s orchestrated campaign of calumny. Having reviewed the file on their paean for the hit job KAUNA YAGA, we have found some records.

KAUNA IS A LIAR AND “INFANT TERRIBLE” (PROBLEM CHILD)

Ordinarily, I can’t join issues with a girl who wasn’t born when I was already practicing law. At her age now, I was already admitted to the bar, while she is still grappling with trying to obtain her high school certificate so it will be an intellectual mismatch to try to go head-to-head with her. Indeed in 1996 when she was born, I was already imprisoned by General Abacha for advocating for democracy and a better future for future generations including her.

However because she has allowed herself to be used to do harm to those that helped her and harm to others who would have been helped as well, it is necessary to set the record straight.

Kauna Yaga was among those nominated for a meeting with me and a visiting US Congressional delegation by a local chief in Chibok shortly after the abductions. Money was sent to them for their travel expenses. They did not come as scheduled.

I then directed that they use the money I sent them to obtain passports and apply for school abroad. Upon requesting them for the passport number to process the admission, they replied that their passport had “no number.” Apparently they had used the money to snap ordinary passport photos and not obtain national passports based on their level of understanding.

They were advised to go and obtain national passports but after traveling from Chibok to Yola, the passport office was allegedly closed so Kauna gave up on her US school application.

Only later after some other girls had successfully obtained passports to travel abroad did Kauna Yaga resurface seeking once again to go to US.

In December several months after the first girls arrived, Kauna landed in America. I was contacted by BBC who said they had interviewed her in Nigeria before she left and that they wanted to follow up and see how she was settling down in America.

I proceeded to the school only to be ambushed by the police for no explicable reason other than a false report made by a disgruntled female White colleague. After it was established that I was the listed guardian on the school forms, the police left. The school then asked the girls to come and see me and they were overjoyed to do so.

Thereafter the girls were asked who wanted to do the interview. Kauna said she wanted to while her other classmate declined. Having been asked several times and she insisted that she would do the interview, arrangements were made for the interview to be done. The interview had nothing to do with her story of abduction. It was simply about what she thought of her new school in America.

Subsequently in trying to find out why the hullabaloo and the police drama, we were told that the school counselor had advised against it. Ironically the person parading herself as “school counselor” was one Somiari Demm a Nigerian woman who approached me on Facebook that she had seen me on TV and wanted to help as a volunteer.

Unknown to me after showing her the school where I placed the girls she negotiated a paid contract with the school as their counselor. I was later informed that Somiari Demm was an unlicensed psychologist and in fact was a yoga instructor.

Of course this made sense because she had apparently advised that the girls shouldn’t be interviewed even though she had never met them and hadn’t evaluated them. It is a cardinal rule of psychology that you cannot give a diagnosis of someone whom you haven’t assessed.

Section 7 of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Principles of Medical Ethics makes it unethical for psychiatrists to give a professional opinion on someone whom they have not examined and from whom they have not obtained consent to discuss their mental health.

Only when it was pointed out to her that she had never met Kauna and therefore could not give such directives (even if she was competent or licensed to) did she back away. Somiari Demm who had nothing going on for herself professionally then used her link to the Chibok girls through me to make a name for herself as a “psychologist” to the Chibok girls.

That is the only interaction I had with Kauna concerning a media interview and it was a follow up to an interview which she had already done in Nigeria which I was not privy too. She did it willing and had every opportunity to decline. Kauna never did any other US interview besides this one of December 2014. Any claims otherwise are false.

Kauna Yaga turned out to be a malcontent. She wrote to me from school complaining that she didn’t like the cell phone I got her. I sent her another phone in school and she again wrote to me that she didn’t like the second phone I gave her. Upon my next visit to them in school, I again took a third phone to her.

During that visit, I explained to her for the first time that we had to make the best use of limited resources because she had run up a phone bill of $700 on my landline during her last holiday at my home. I had purchased calling cards for all the girls to use as a cost effective way of communicating with their families.

While most of the girls learnt how to do this, someone had used our landline to make numerous costly calls to Nigeria. We did not know who it was until I started receiving phone calls from boys in Nigeria on my landline asking for Kauna.

During their initial year in the US, they incurred total phone bills of almost $8000 (2.5 million naira!) This was my last meeting with Kauna Yaga in December 2015 one year after her arrival in US.

At the time I advised the girls thus, “if you came to America to get phones, you will get phones but it will be no good to you. If you came to get an education, not only will you be able to afford good phones but you will be a blessing to others.”

Today Kauna Yaga no doubt has a great phone courtesy of the $1 million the Nigerian govt spent on them since the takeover. However Kauna has no degree or certification of note 2 years and $1 million later. Kauna had lied to people that someone bought her an iphone and I refused to give her.

The irony is that I was the one who suggested someone buy her the phone. Unfortunately it was locked to a different mobile network from the service provider I acquired for the girls. As a result I had to purchase another phone compatible to our mobile carrier so she could use it.

This was beyond her level of comprehension because in Nigeria phones are not usually locked to networks. Strangely enough there was no network on their school campus even and the girls had access to a landline which the others used to make phone calls free of charge.

This whole tantrum over a cell phone was just too much ado about nothing! Her communications regarding the cell Phone demands will be released as an exhibit once we have the requisite clearance.

Let me add that another issue we had with Kauna was that barely two weeks after resuming school in Dec 2014, she wanted to leave and come to my house on holiday. We advised her that since she had just come, let her remain on campus and adjust to the school.

During another school break, she announced that she wanted to go to the home of Somiari Demm the “counselor” for holiday. We discussed with the school that this was highly inappropriate and unethical for a student to go to the home of a supposed school counselor.

It is highly unprofessional! Even in Nigeria, when you send a student to school, they do not write back and say that they are traveling to a teacher’s house for the break. This is even more serious when you are dealing with a sensitive case like the Chibok girls who were abducted.

The school asked Somiari Demm and she denied that she and Kauna made any such such arrangement but that was when I began to suspect something underhanded was going on because at this point Somiari was no longer in the employment of the school.

Last year I learnt that Kauna dropped out of the adult education school program in Bronx New York where Somiari took her too and moved to Maine where Somiari resides. It all began to make sense. God only knows what she’s doing with herself besides lying in the media.

I have all her academic records for the one and half years she was in my program and apart from once when I gave her special recognition for a good grade, there was nothing else spectacular there. So ironically, she was in fact the one who wanted to abscond from school on multiple occasions but was encouraged to stay.

Today it appears that is now the case. It is sad that the government lied to them that they would put them in university immediately they left me. However till date, the government has failed in its promise to Kauna. They put them in an adult education certificate program and were falsely parading to the world that they were in university before she unceremoniously dropped out.

Let me add that Kauna was rude and demanding unlike most of the Chibok girls. On one occasion she wrote an apology letter for her behavior and we forgave her. It is unfortunate that, as the English axiom goes, the pig has returned to its vomit. Her apology is attached as an exhibit.

It was when we noted behavioral problems with her that I was made aware that she had a history of rudeness to her widowed mum. I was informed that when President Jonathan gave the Chibok girls and families money during their visit to Abuja, she took it instead of giving it to her poor mother.

This is why when I gave the girls spending money in US, Kauna insisted she must have the same amount of money as all the other girls even though I had bought her a phone with the balance as she demanded. She wanted to have the same pocket money as the other girls who had not demanded phones.

In conclusion, her Uncle Samson Yaga now became the organizing agent for the government take over bid. It is my understanding that he received money from Somiari Demm and also Murtala Mohammed Foundation and Minister Women Affairs to achieve this.

Yet, Samson Yaga her Uncle was called by Kauna as “dumb” in her apology letter. These are the kinds of headache she constituted. Kauna is now three and a half years in the US with nothing to show for it. At least 3 of the girls who arrived US on the same day with her and remained with me are all in university now. (One is even graduating with her pre law degree next year).

Kauna’s mates in Nigeria are ahead of her even. The English have a saying, “an idle mind is the devil’s worskshop.” No wonder she made herself a willing tool for the Buhari Government’s propaganda against me.

If most youths from southern Nigeria had been given this opportunity, 2 years is too long to make an impact or success of one’s self. General Buhari recently said Nigerian youths sit down doing nothing expecting free education, housing and healthcare.

While he is generally wrong, the fact remains that Kauna was the exception. She received free ticket, education, housing, healthcare and phone and wasn’t satisfied and still didn’t make anything out of herself. She has herself and Buhari to blame for her failure and not me.

In one and a half years in my program, she progressed from being in a special education class to be placed in Grade 8. In two years with Nigerian government and Murtala Mohammed Foundation she has nothing to show.

BELOW IS EVIDENCE OF KAUNA’S APOLOGIES

EXHIBIT 1

15. From above it is clear that Kauna’s rudeness and bad behavior to us her benefactors caused her mum grief and tears and earned KAUNA a rebuke from her own mother.

Even KAUNA admitted that she herself knew that her behavior was wrong.

KAUNA then called her uncle who was fronting for the Nigerian government a “dume” (dumb or dummy) for not advising her that what she was doing was wrong.

Her apology for failing to acknowledge money given to her during a school visit and for insistence on leaving school for someone’s (Somiari Demi’s) house is also documented.

EXHIBIT 2

16. From circle 1 above, KAUNA apologized for her misbehavior. She said her mum would disown her and swear a curse on her if she left us her benefactors. KAUNA begged for forgiveness and said what was done for her, only God could do, no one else would.

Circle 2 is KAUNA’S announcement that she was going to someone’s (Somiari Demm’s) house for a holiday.

EXHIBIT 3

17. Concerns were raised about Somiari’s pressures on the girls to sign a letter drafted by the embassy asking them to denounce us as far back as Dec 2015 (six months before they finally did.)

Concerns were also raised about Somiari’s online fundraising in the name of the girls.

EXHIBIT 4

18. This is the online fundraising by Somiari Demm in which she claimed to have been supporting the Chibok girls and was raising $7000 for their families in Nigeria which some of the families denied receiving. A diplomat at the Nigerian embassy in DC Ezinne Osuigwe is pictured in the photo proving the collusion of the Nigerian embassy and Somiari Demm in online fundraising in the name of the Chibok girls’ families. Somiari has continued to build her career on the Chibok girls and is now making money in Nigeria as the “counselor” to the recently released girls while leaving KAUNA in limbo in the US in her pursuit of “big fish.”

CONCLUSION

It is strange that after this apology, admission of wrong doing and begging for forgiveness, KAUNA YAGA has once again resorted to even more malicious lies and misbehavior. The only thing that has happened since her apology is the takeover and monetary payments made to her courtesy of the Nigerian government.

She is now an over indulged and underperforming individual and a “spoilt American brat” who jettisoned her cultural/moral upbringing which was never the intent of my humanitarian intervention to assist her and the others.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Emmanuel Ogebe

Washington